Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Tuesday February 7, 2006 No monetary sense at all.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- President Bush on Monday sent Congress a $2.77 trillion budget request that would boost defense spending, while trimming Medicare and other government programs even as first-term tax cuts are extended.

The budget doesn't fully account for expected costs associated with the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. White House officials last week said war-related supplemental spending would likely top $120 billion in the current fiscal year.

Bush also seeks to cut projected spending on mandatory entitlement programs by $65 billion over five years, with the bulk coming from measures designed to hold down outlays for Medicare, the health-care program for the elderly, by $36 billion through 2011. Mandatory spending refers to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, in which outlays are set automatically according to the number of beneficiaries and other factors.

We can cut education and health costs and help for the poor, but we need to add money to the pockets of the wealthy and to help fund a war that wasn't necessary in the first place.

The people who make the monetary decisions for this country have no common sense. If they ran my budget, I would be bankrupt and living under a bridge with no food and no medical help and no future.